This article reviews neuroscience and cognitive psychology literature to understand how trauma and emotion impact policing and why some strategies are counterproductive by threatening police legitimacy. This review further illuminates the pernicious effect of stress in the policing environment, in both officer and citizen. Therefore, the article makes the point that the current focus on tactical training and the ‘warrior ethos’ diminishes community policing values, destroys trust, undermines respect and discourages cooperation while fostering resentment and hostility thus making everyday policing more hazardous. It argues that community policing strategies offer the only path for successful consensus policing in a democracy.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.